I have to say, that when I had the dogs on kibble, I was getting about one and a half-two cups of brown poop that looked like people poop twice a day from Tess alone. Let me tell you that added up in the yard, and I only fed her 2 1/2 cups a day to begin with, so more was going out than in. It was disgusting to walk in the yard unless I scooped several times a week.

She has been on raw for 2 weeks, and now she has maybe 3/4 cup, if that, worth of dry, crumbly whitish poop once a day.

dogcrazyjen wrote:I have to say, that when I had the dogs on kibble, I was getting about one and a half-two cups of brown poop that looked like people poop twice a day from Tess alone. Let me tell you that added up in the yard, and I only fed her 2 1/2 cups a day to begin with, so more was going out than in. It was disgusting to walk in the yard unless I scooped several times a week.

She has been on raw for 2 weeks, and now she has maybe 3/4 cup, if that, worth of dry, crumbly whitish poop once a day.

!

Wonderful ain't it? No more pooper scooping!

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

babyreba wrote:does anyone know what it is about the raw diet that creates this?

i have always wondered about it . . . and never remember to ask!

It's that all of the filler has been taken out of their diet. Try it with yourself. Eat just meat and veggies, no carbs at all, for a couple days. You will poop less and it will be much firmer. It's all because you're only putting in what your body can use

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

Nothing is wasted, everything in a raw diet is used by the canine body. Nothing in it to "go to waste". That's why the crappier (pun intended) dog foods make a dog poop so much, it is ALL crap. (again, pun intended)

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

yeah, that much i know. i've fed raw to reba, i've seen the change in volume.

but why white CHALKY stuff?

that's the part i don't get.

what is it that makes it chalky and crumbly when, with wild animals who presumably are eating natural raw diets, their scat looks normal and firm and, uh, sticks around in the yard without crumbing into dust in 24 to 36 hours?

babyreba wrote:does anyone know what it is about the raw diet that creates this?

i have always wondered about it . . . and never remember to ask!

It means there is too much bone in the diet. If poop is raw and chalky ALL the time, it's NOT a good thing. Some offal needs to be added to the diet or boneless meals. This is one of the things that people that feed raw need to be careful of...too much bone=too much calcium/phosphorus, which is not good. V's poop looks normal, like it does when she was on kibble...the only thing is it's a bit softer. The only time it comes out hard and crumbly is when she's eaten a chicken back or necks, or a marrow bone. Same thing with Pookie when she was alive. She very rarely had dry, crumbly poop.

My dogs don't always start out chalky & white, they have color & they aren't always chalky right off the bat but within just a few hours they turn to chalk. I do need to add more organ meat to their diets though. They get bone 5-6 times a week in the form of turkey legs for the most part.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

mnp13 wrote:That's what happens when I give the dogs marrow bones. Chalky whitish yellow poop, and lots of it. I thought it was because of the marrow?

Nah, the marrow doesn't cause hard poop...if anything, it'll give them diarrhea or softer stool because it's so rich/fatty. Even if they don't each much of the bone, they still gnaw off enough of it to make their poop chalky and hard, it really doesn't take much.

Not all of it is chalky. It tends towards small tan hard stuff, but yesterday it was chalky. I ran out of the ground mix two days ago, I was going to make more today, that has the veggies, egg, organ meats, non-bone meats etc, in it. Sounds like I need to make sure they get the mix once a day.

I found a local natural foods pet store right by house and went there today. The lady was great - she spent about 30-45 minutes talking to me about all the different kibbles, and then showed me the raw foods they have available. They have pre-ground meat/bone that you can slice chunks off of. They're kept frozen and she said they don't need thawed before feeding them. She said even if I don't go full-raw (though she HIGHLY recommended it) I should at least think about supplementing Inara's kibble with raw. So I may do that - the raw stuff was too expensive to do full-time.